How can we make Microsoft Teams better?

Guest Access

Collaboration is a core element of how we work which requires the creation of extended teams on a project or long term engagement. Whilst the majority of our teams are internal staff, there is still a critical element of any project that requires the inclusion of our clients and/or external vendors. It is imperative that Microsoft Teams allows for the easy (but secure) inclusion of external parties for the length of any project or engagement.

This is why historically products like Groups etc. have not been adopted as widely as we would hope. If the tool only allows for 60-70% of a team to participate, it breaks. If a tool does not allow 100% of those who need to be involved to participate equally, if breaks and our users and clients have far too many alternative solutions that they can easily adopt (Slack etc.) to quickly and efficiently do their jobs.

Finally, making external parties sign up for a Microsoft account (such as Hotmail) to authenticate against any collaboration service does not work, and better approach is required and needed.

We’re starting to roll out the ability to add anyone as a guest in Microsoft Teams. This means that anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook.com, Gmail.com or others, can participate as a guest in Teams with full access to team chats, meetings and files.

Hi everyone, thanks for your comments in this thread, tweets, emails and calls. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me with any questions at all; I’m here for YOU! I’ll continue to update this ticket as we make progress towards MSA.

Just in case you missed it, there is a FAQs in the Guest Access Help Article. Just click the “FAQs” tab here: https://aka.ms/GuestAccessHelp We’re updating them this week with new questions we’ve been getting, like “Is Guest Access available for Business Essentials licenses?” (The answer is yes.)

This is our first iteration of the feature, so we really want your feedback! Please post your feedback to UserVoice, this specific ticket, or on Twitter, or via email at sparavi (at) Microsoft (dot) com. Please include user logs if you encounter any bugs.

This has been the most popular and most voted on user requested item and we’re so glad you gave us this suggestion. Thank you for your support of Teams!!

Hi everyone, I know its been a couple months since my last update on this, so wanted to let you know where this stands.

We were aiming for June, as we had stated in our GA blog post, but we’re facing some issues so it’s looking like it will be just a tad bit longer (not too long). This is a top priority, so trust me when I say you will have it soon!

You may have already heard this because we announced this date at our public release of Teams last month, but I thought I’d email everyone just in case they didn’t get the news. We’ve publicly committed to a date for this feature, and it is June!

Its a difficult feature to pull off, and we want to make sure to get it right for you. Thank you for your patience and most of all, thank you for bringing this idea for us! We’re excited to soon be able to mark the #1 UserVoice item as complete. :-)

Tried with my personal email address, instead of being directed to create a Microsoft Account for free, I get the error message "This is a personal email address" (which is definitely the target, isn't it ?).

This probably comes from the fact that my personal email address is already linked to an Office365 Home Edition. So it seems that case was not taken into account yet, which is due to causing issues with a number of guests until corrected.

The current service (3/2/18) is not fit for purpose for bringing together a group of people from different organisations to collaborate. THerefore I have just decided to use Slack :( This is a key area for improvements.

Work with guests in Microsoft Teams—We’re rolling out the ability to add anyone as a guest in Microsoft Teams. Previously, only those with an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) account could be added as a guest. Starting next week, anyone with a business or consumer email address—including Outlook.com and Gmail.com—can participate as a guest in Teams with full access to team chats, meetings, and files. Guests in Teams will continue to be covered by the same compliance and auditing protection afforded to Office 365 subscribers, and can be managed securely within Azure AD.

I think it is disingenuous for the Teams devs to say that their product has guest access. Their implementation of guest access is at a minimum confusing as I feel like they are twisting the definition that most people would consider for the word guest. The nuance between a true definition of a guest account (communication with anyone with any email account and no Office 365 affiliation or paid Microsoft account) and the MS Teams definition (communication only with people with an Office 365 paid account) is lost to the casual person who looks at the features of Teams and is not really explained well enough.

This is a showstopper to many people who have to have a way to communicate with people outside of their company. Allowing this access would make Teams more sticky and more convenient, making it more valuable, not less.

I hope that they are moving in this direction and that it is corrected soon because, as the creator of this suggestion said, there are too many free alternatives to go to that have this ability and, once you get ingrained in using another tool, people will not switch back to Teams.

@pierre trudell. @angela size. The only way I'm able to use a Microsoft Account to invite a guest is if I first create a Azure AD Contact and then invite them. As far as i can see there are no difference in this matter between Web an MacOS.
But the major problem is that MS have such a big problem to use ordinary mail adresses as the authoritative owner. Rest of the world use it but MS havn't accepted the world order on this. If their are other demands from MS customers please let us as customer make that choice our self. Some customers accept guests in their teams/groups/sites based on email authority, other customers needs higher authority demands it could be federations, Office365 Work/Shool accounts, Microsoft Accounts, Gmail, facebook, twitter you name it. But please let me as a customer make that decision, and let your technical teams solve the issues in a more effective way, than you are dealing with it right now.

It now works for regular (free) Microsoft accounts. (Did not work 2 week ago). It only work in the web interface. The Mac application still insist on a 365 account. BTW it still does not work if your Microsoft account does not have a Microsoft e-mail address. So it is not perfect but at least we can see some progress. And I can now can invite external users without incurring any cost as long as they are willing to use or create a Microsoft account.

I was able to browse and edit files, post comment, switch to the sharepoint interface. WoW!

I read the following news inside teams yesterday. And thought maybe, maybe MSFT is on it's way to fix such a basic function as inviting guest to a team by email without the need of a "Work and school account" but NO. You are now able to participate in a meeting within team as an anom user! 16 month after first release and still no progress in this basic, fundamental functionality Take a look at Cisco Sparc, Slack, competitors that just work out of the box but in MSFT world nothing works as expected and I wonder if the developers understand what we are asking for?

8 February 2018
Features
Anonymous join is here

Need to meet with someone outside of your organization? No problem. This feature lets you send a Teams meeting invite to anyone with a valid email address (even if you're scheduling your Teams meeting from Outlook). When you invite someone, they'll receive an email containing instructions and a link to your meeting. Invitees won't need to download Teams, unless they want some extra functionality, like screen sharing

I know this has been asked a dozen times, but where is true guest access to those without an O365 or hotmail account? I have enough emails, so do my clients, we can't set up emails for them just so that they can get into a product that I can replace for free.

Our company is using Slack because this feature is not available in MS Teams. Once a tool get's entrenched, it's hard to change. Is Guess Access for Non MS Office 365 users on the road map for delivery?